So this did not go as well as I planned it to. I thought it would be so easy for me to return back to my old ways of not being a distracted driver and never touching my phone or messing with the radio too much. Turns out I was wrong. Really wrong.
This week I had a lot of events going on. I had a music festival, school projects due, and my best friends birthday party (which I was planning) so you can only imagine how much planning and collaborating I was doing with my friends so that everything was going smoothly.
Most of the time if someone were to text me, I would wait until a stoplight to look at it to make sure no one needed the information right away. But looking back at it, I am honestly mad at myself. I was just in an accident 2 months ago because of distracted driving and was I really caring this little about it happening again?
After sitting here thinking about why I let myself get distracted, I realized that my phone has not only become a distraction but it has also become an addiction. I am constantly checking in on my friends making sure we have everything planned perfectly and if something goes wrong I have a NEED to reply in an instant. But it should not be like that. If something is really wrong or someone needs my attention that badly, they can call me since I have apple car play set up in my car. Thankfully, my car has a favorites tab on the apple car play app which makes it super easy for me to call someone if needed. I don’t have to go scrolling through my phone to find who I want to call because all of my most popular numbers are displayed right there on the screen! Over the next week I am determined to completely stop checking my messages if I have not reached my destination yet.
Here is a link of a short video about us being addicted to our phones.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGHno_D1PrE
My second biggest distraction this past week was with out a doubt, Spotify. I love music. (Maybe a little too much) It is very hard to find a song that I don’t like which makes my favorite music playlist very very long. My all time favorite playlist is currently clocking in at a whopping 23 hours and 50 minutes long. That’s a lot of songs to pick from. This past week I have not been choosing my queue of songs before I start driving which makes me distracted when I want to listen to certain songs.
I know that scrolling and scrolling to find a certain song to jam too is just as bad a texting and driving and this is something I really need to work on in the following weeks. This is a distraction that is very easy to correct as long as I just tell myself to stop when I go to change the song. This week, before I start driving, I will take a minute before I start driving and make sure to queue all of the songs I might be in the mood for.
In order to end on a positive note, I want to talk about the things I have improved on. There were a few improvements including not eating while driving and taking my schools shuttle in order to get from campus to campus.
My proudest improvement this week was not eating while I was driving. I can’t really remember why I waited until I was so hungry, but I was STARVING on my way to Chick-Fi-A last Friday. Normally, I eat the french fries on my way home because most of the time I don’t know how to control myself when there are french fries added into the situation. But this past Friday, even though I was starving, I waited until I got home to eat all of my food even when the Chick-Fil-A bag was starring me down just begging me to eat the fries.
Some days I just keep going and going and I don’t take a minute to slow down and focus on the task I am doing and this is something I really need to work on this next week.
Make sure you go to https://www.gjel.com/scholarship to take the pledge and join me on a journey to safe driving!
Jordan's Journey to Safe Driving 